Anthropology: A New Scope

The Expansion and Contraction of the Divine Conscience

Spiritual expansions and contractions can never penetrate into man's God-given conscience, for spiritual expansions and contractions are due to success and failure to achieve worldly advantages. The divine conscience is, however, far superior to these mediocre states. Many human beings, alas, are so drowned in material affairs that they disable their God-given conscience and waste their life on baseless expansions and contractions. 

When the divine conscience is awaken in man, all normal expansions are replaced by supreme, divine expansions.

Having achieved divine expansion of conscience, man will undergo no more contractions, unless:

1-He feels a greater expansion which will make his current expansion seem meager.

2- Since man is in the natural world, he will always suffer from contractions in his worldly affairs until he reaches God. Divine expansions do make, however, man feel that these natural contractions are temporary and mortal.

The Consequences of Expansions and Contractions

Both expansions and contractions leave certain effects. Constant contractions depress the soul, but frequent expansions result in spiritual joy and freedom.

The Reasons Why Anthropology Has Failed

Throughout history, a great many intellectuals have attempted to study and explore man from various points of view – scientific, mystical, philosophical, moral and religious. Although the amount of research done is so great that it cannot be totally discarded as unsuccessful, many scholars admit that the human nature is by no means discovered or revealed to them. The factors influential in its failure are:

1-As we already know, all facts are interrelated, and not knowing one of them will cast darkness on others, too. Man is an extremely complex being, full of countless, unsolved aspects and potentials. It is the unsolved aspects of man that has prevented the complete exploration of his nature. Incorrect interpretations of intuitive knowledge (where the recognized is the same as the recognizer) and free will (the dominance and supervision of the self over the positive and negative poles of an action) are examples that prove man's unsuccessful endeavor to generalize the laws and principles of nature to his own case. 

2-On one hand, we have divine religions and men of wisdom and men of wisdom stating that man is a valuable being innately full of hidden potentials; on the other hand, the history of mankind shows that many human beings have not activated their potentials, and are thus devoid of a great deal of their deserved greatness. Such a contradiction has led these scientists to believe that there must some unknown X-factor in man that inhibits his development and progress. This inability in man – that is, not all of his potentials being activated – cannot lead to the human nature remaining unsolved, for oppressing human potentials is not due to lack of knowledge about them, for man does not correctly put the little knowledge he already has about himself to use, either. Does man truly not know the fact that fighting righteousness is wrong, or does he know it and still does not stop doing it?!

3-Sometimes an incorrect point infiltrates the culture of a nation as a basic principle, which leads to incorrect interpretations of man. For instance, the culture of slavery so strongly penetrates into ancient India that even an intellectual like Aristotle accepts it and expresses ideas confirming its originality.

4-Analyzing and separating the human nature, which has become quite fashionable nowadays, has brought about great confusion in the humanities. Intellectuals who have studied one of man's aspects have become so obsessed with that one aspect that they have considered all of man's existence in it, thus imperfectly interpreting man. Despite its weaknesses, the analytical method does, however, have its advantages in studying and interpreting the nature of man  its incredible accuracy, whereas combination methods sometimes show superficial tendencies that prevents correct knowledge. 

Expertise is definitely an essential part of scientific advance, but experts of the humanities have to beware not to allow their expertise to cause disastrous damage to human harmony and unity.

The disadvantages of the analytical method are:

First, it cuts off all relationships existent between realities. The fact that man's various aspects are interrelated is totally ignored; all human facts are studied separately from each other. 

Secondly, it neglects the harmony in the human character; therefore when one aspect of man's nature appears to be significant to an intellectual, he – consciously or unconsciously – interprets man solely from that point of view.

Ever since studying man by means of the purely analytical method became popular, one essentially important principle was forgotten: comparing man with at least one product of the interaction of chemical elements which has characteristics different from the separate, individual elements, in particular chemical compounds that cannot be changed back to their components. By comparing the unity and harmony existing in life and the human character with the product of a chemical compound, we see that it has both new qualities and is irreversible. 

The third problem with the analytical method is that the thinker sometimes falls into the disastrous "There is nothing except this" state of mind. As some of them have claimed in interpretation of man:

●Man has a social aspect and nothing else.

●He is an absolutist, and nothing else.

●He is a hedonist, and nothing else.

●He is merely a sexual instinct and nothing else.

●Man is nothing but a wolf.

●He is an exploring animal, and nothing else.

●Man is no more than a selfish animal.

●He is an animal seeking freedom.

●Man is an ambitious animal greedy for power, and nothing else.

●Man is a bargaining animal, and nothing else.

Anthropology can only make logical progress when the "There is nothing else except this" viewpoint does not exist. 

Since only one aspect of man is considered in the analytical method, sometimes man becomes obsessed with it, and puts all of his other aspects at its service. Furthermore, obsession toward one aspect makes man fall astray from science and research, and become intensely infatuated merely with the fascinating fame and influence of outstanding figures of science.

 

Visits: ۳۰۴۳۵

Contact Form

Address:

Sadegiye 2nd square - Ayatollat Kashani Boulevard - Hasan Abad Street - 4th Alley - Number 22 - Iran - Tehran

Postal Code: 1481843465
Shopping Centers:
Email: info@ostad-jafari.com
Phone: +9821 44091042 +9821 44005453
Fax: +9821 44070200
All rights reserved to Allemeh Jafari institute
Designed and supported by Hamrah Afzar Iranian Co